Road Rash (20 page)

Someone was shaking me. “Zach! Zach, get up, man—someone’s messing with our motor home!”

“Huh …” I opened my eyes. It was Glenn. “What’s going on?”

“I need some backup. Someone’s down in the parking lot, breaking into the Bad-Mobile. Let’s go!”

WTF …?
I rolled out of bed and pulled my jeans and shoes on. It was still dark out. I looked around, wishing my cymbal stand or something were nearby, but I couldn’t see anything worthwhile. I would have given anything for at least a flashlight.

He must have seen me look at the pull chain for the bulb. “Don’t turn the light on—they’ll see it.”

Crap. “Okay, let’s roll.”

As we flew down the hallway, I said, “So why don’t we call the cops?”

“Take too long … all our stuff’ll be gone by then.”

By the time we got down to the parking lot, the door to the Bad-Mobile was wide open. There was no one in sight—whoever they were, they must have been inside.

I looked at Glenn.
“Now what?”
I was trying to whisper but it was difficult because I was panting so hard. “How many guys did you see?”

He shrugged, but I wasn’t exactly sure which question he was answering. It didn’t really matter, because just then he picked up a beer bottle off the gravel and flung it at the motor home, where it hit the side with a loud
thunk. “Hey!”
he yelled, his voice surprisingly loud and deep. “Get the hell out of there!”

At first there was no response. Then there was some commotion inside, and after a minute someone stuck his face out for half a second. The face disappeared, then a few seconds later three guys came out. One of them might have been the
butthead who’d climbed onstage, but at that moment I was more concerned by the fact that there were three of them, they weren’t exactly little, and one of them had a bass guitar in his hands while the other two were each carrying some of our spare electronic equipment.

We stood there for a second, maybe fifty feet apart, looking at each other in the dim blue light of a distant streetlamp. Then Glenn spoke up. “The cops are on their way—they’ll be here any second. If they catch you with that stuff, it’ll be B&E plus grand larceny and you’re going to prison. All for some crap that ain’t worth a hundred bucks in a pawnshop. So if you’re smart, you’ll put it back and get the hell out of here.”

One of them said something to the others that I couldn’t catch, then turned back to us. “You didn’t call no cops,” he shouted hoarsely. “Screw you!” He started to move away from the Bad-Mobile with the bass in his hands.

“No,” came a voice from beside us. “Screw
you
.”

I whipped around. It was Danny, holding a gun in his hands. And he looked like he knew how to handle it, too. All of a sudden I could feel my heart pounding in my chest like a freakin’ bass drum.

“All right, guys,” Glenn said. “Game over. Put the stuff down and clear out.”

The two guys who hadn’t said anything set their stuff down and backed away with their hands up, then turned and ran off. The other one hesitated.

Danny pointed the pistol right at him, holding it up with both hands as he looked at the guy over the sights and squinted one eye. “Bro,” he said slowly, “that’s my 1965 Fender Precision
bass you’re holding there, and there’s no way I’m gonna stand here and watch you walk away with it.
Comprende?
”

Even though the guy was probably drunk or high or whatever, that seemed to get through. He put it down and half ran, half staggered away.

“And don’t come back!” I yelled for some stupid reason, probably because I hadn’t said anything yet.

I took a deep breath … I could feel it kinda shake as I let it out. I turned to Danny. “Wow … I didn’t know you’d brought a gun on the road with you.”

He bristled. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, I just—” Then I stopped stone-cold—he was pointing it at
me
. “Are you crazy?” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

He put his finger on the trigger.

I took a step back. “Hey!”

He pulled the trigger.

Squirt …

I looked down at the drops of water on my bare chest, then I looked back up at him. He tried to keep a straight face, but he busted up, and pretty soon so did Glenn.

I was pissed. “You son of a …” But it was hard to stay mad, and that kind of laughter is totally contagious. Pretty soon all three of us were standing in the parking lot at four in the morning, laughing so hard we had tears coming out of our eyes.

We spent the next hour or so unloading anything of value from the Bad-Mobile and putting it up in our room—we figured there was no guarantee they
wouldn’t
come back, in spite of my parting words. And whenever the conversation wound down, either Danny or Glenn would hold up a finger and shake it like a strict teacher and say,
“And don’t come back!”
and then they’d be doubled up all over again, laughing so hard they could barely breathe.

By the time we were done, the sun was up, and we were so wired from the excitement and the exercise that there was no way we were going back to sleep.

“Anyone up for breakfast?” Danny asked. “I found the perfect local joint. It’s like the total
funk de funk
, man.”

So he led us downtown, past the coffeehouse Glenn and I had been to earlier. We turned the corner onto Main Street and followed him into this place with a big vintage sign out front that said
B&W BAR & CAFÉ
.

“This is it, guys. What do you think?”

“I think …,” Glenn said dryly, “that the name is certainly accurate.”

He wasn’t kidding. You walked in the double doors—
NEVER LOCKED!
, the sign said—and running down the right side of the long room was a lunch counter. Or breakfast counter, as the case may be. Complete with vinyl-topped chrome stools bolted to the white linoleum tile. Right out of some old movie. And there were actors on the set, in the form of locals sitting on those stools drinking coffee and eating from plates piled high with home fries and ham steaks and hotcakes. And a guy behind the counter with one of those tall, round paper chef’s hats, cooking up a storm on a huge griddle. And a waitress with a uniform, complete with name tag which—I swear to God—said M
ARGE
. And yeah, she was a little large. And she was
definitely
in charge.

But going down the
left
side of the room was a bar. With metal stools, too, only not bolted to the floor. Of course. How could you have a bar fight with the stools bolted to the floor? And the floor was also linoleum, but it was more a blotchy black, not cheery white. The different types of flooring met down the middle of the room, like the borders of two totally different countries. And yeah, the bar side of the movie set had its own characters, too. There was this skinny dude behind the bar, pouring shots. He was so pale he looked like he’d never left the place. (At least while the sun was up. I looked for pointy canines, but I couldn’t tell.…) And there were rough-looking old guys lined up at the bar, pounding down whiskey. At six in the morning. (I guess that’s kinda the definition of “rough old guy,” isn’t it?)

It was surreal, the two opposite sides of the room, each with
its own group of people at their own counters, back to back maybe ten feet away from each other … but worlds apart.

There was no chirpy little hostess waiting to seat us, either. You just walked in, chose your poison—coronaries on the right, cirrhosis on the left—and took your stool accordingly. We just stood there for a minute, taking it in. I think we were all pretty loopy from the whole parking-lot adventure and the lack of sleep that followed.

“I’m liking it,” I finally said.

“Me too,” Glenn agreed. “It’s real.”

Danny looked around the room. “If I lived around here,” he announced, “this would be my regular hang.” He paused. “The girls would absolutely hate it.”

Glenn nodded. “Maybe that’s part of the attraction?”

We looked at each other and slowly grinned. Like I said, it was a goofy morning.

We found some stools at the breakfast counter and had a seat. After a few minutes Marge-the-waitress came by—with a pen jammed behind her ear and a cigarette dangling from her mouth—and took our order. I swear, she was the one that Jackie, back in Bozeman, must have used as her role model.

“Back in a few,” Glenn said after we’d ordered, and he took off in search of the restroom.

Maybe it was the loopiness of the morning—I don’t know—but out of the blue I turned to Danny. “Hey, you wanna listen to this tune I found? I think we could cover it.”

“Sure, let’s hear it.”

So I dialed up “Every Day” on my phone, handed him the earbuds, and pressed
play
. After a few seconds he was nodding
in time and tapping his foot. And then he was smiling as he was nodding and tapping.

When it was over, he took out the buds. “That was pretty awesome.” He looked at the phone. “KJ? Never heard of them. Where’d you find it?”

“I think they’re an indie band out of California. The tune’s getting a little airplay.” Close enough … just a matter of tense, right? “Anyway, I heard it and liked it, so I downloaded it.”

“I could totally see us doing that. It rocks.”

I just nodded casually, but inside I was thinking,
Yesss!

When Glenn came back, Danny was all like, “GT, you’ve gotta hear this cool song Zach found. It’d be a killer tune for us to cover.”

Note to self:
You have
got
to learn to think these things through.…

I waved it off. “Remind me later,” I said to Glenn. “Actually, I’ve got a few different things I want you to hear.” I put my phone away, then looked over at Danny and changed the subject. “Was that really your P Bass that that guy had?”

He shook his head. “You think I’d leave that alone in the Bad-Mobile overnight? But I thought it was better than saying it was my cheap backup that I could replace at any Guitar Center.” He grinned. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Just then the food showed up. And as we ate, we rehashed our heroic foiling of the robbery of the faithful Bad-Mobile. When we were about done with breakfast, I brought up something that had popped into my mind earlier. “So, you heard us go down the hall, and then you heard us in the parking lot below?” I asked Danny.

“Yeah, my window was cracked open. And you guys weren’t too quiet down there.” He imitated Glenn in the parking lot.
“Hey,”
he called in a deep dumb-guy voice that sounded like Patrick on
SpongeBob. “Get the hell out of there …!”

“Well, I’m glad we were so noisy. So, how come Brad didn’t come down with you?”

He paused, just for half a second. “Ya know, I guess he’s a heavier sleeper than me. Maybe he had a couple of beers after the gig?” He shrugged. “But you had those dudes handled.…” He held up that finger again, and he and Glenn chimed in with,
“And don’t come back!”

As they were cracking up all over again, Danny put some money on the counter and spun around on his stool. “
Woo-hoo
. This was fun, but I’ve gotta get back to … um, I’m gonna try and get some sleep. See you guys back at the club.”

After he left, Glenn and I got some coffee and just watched the customers. I used my phone to take a quick video of the place, slowly panning to show the total funkiness of the whole room.

“Hey,” I said, “do you suppose there’s a rule that once you pick a side, you can’t cross over?”

He considered it. “I’m thinking you can,” he decided, “but not on the same visit. You have to pay your bill, leave, and then you can come back later. But did ya know, there’s also gambling in the back?”

“No way! Next you’ll be saying there’s a whorehouse upstairs.”

“Used to be,” he said matter-of-factly, “at least according to the sign over there. But seriously, there’s a card table back by the
head. And it’s going full-on, right now. Literally, liquor in the front and poker in the rear.”

We laughed at the absurdity of it. Then for some reason I thought about that email from Don Davis. Well, it had already gone to press, so what the heck.…

I pulled it up and handed my phone to Glenn without a word.

He took it, and I watched his reaction as he read it. It started with a little smile, but by the end it was a total BFG. He stuck out his hand. “Congratulations, man,” he said. “That’s awesome. I’d thought about submitting to that before, but I could never seem to get one of my tunes all tracked in time. So who’s in this band? Some sort of side project you had back in LR?”

Man, I’d been sweating this moment ever since I’d gotten the reply from Don. I’d come close to telling Glenn a couple of times, but each time I had second thoughts, unsure how he’d take it. I swear, I almost made up some bullshit story right there in the diner to avoid it again.

But instead I shook my head slowly as I called up the tune and handed him the earbuds. “I
told
you it was good,” I said as he put in the earbuds. “You’ve gotta learn to trust my judgment.”

He looked confused, but I just pressed
play
and leaned back, folding my arms and watching. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

For about two seconds the confused look remained, like he was trying to figure out how this familiar guitar line had made it into someone’s song. Then he got it and looked at me like,
WTF …?

I held my finger to my lips, then pointed to my ears like,
Just
be quiet and listen
. And he did. All the way to the end. Then he took the buds out and just stared at me, not saying a word.

I could tell something wasn’t right. He looked … mad.

He stood up and pointed at the stool I was sitting on. “Stay right there.” Then he walked out the doors that were never locked. Taking my phone with him.

He was gone for two more cups of coffee. And a side of sourdough toast. With peanut butter. I was worried—it was dawning on me that I’d finished his song … without him. Or his permission.
Shit
.